Outlook is a software application typically used as a personal information manager. Outlook is used as an e-mail application, and for other purposes such as note taking and calendaring. SharePoint is a software application typically running on a server farm, which can be used for multi-user collaboration and access to stored documents. Users often access SharePoint using Outlook as a front end.
SharePoint has some document management capabilities which can be effected using a web browser as described below, and can store many types of documents, along with metadata for those documents. A user can search for documents stored in SharePoint using a web browser, based on the content and/or metadata associated with the stored document.
A SharePoint document store is organised into a hierarchical tree of ‘containers’ in a similar manner to that used in Outlook. There are some differences in terminology, e.g. in a SharePoint web application, a ‘document library’ is the nearest equivalent to a ‘folder’ in Outlook, these document libraries are located in ‘Sites’, and Sites are arranged into ‘Site Collections’.
As noted above, SharePoint can be accessed using a web browser, and the user interface that is generated using this approach is referred to in this description as the “native SharePoint” user interface. The document management functionality provided by this native SharePoint user interface suffers from significant limitations.
SharePoint can alternately be accessed using Outlook as a front end, and the user interface that is generated using this approach is referred to in this description as the “native Outlook/SharePoint” user interface. The document management functionality provided by this native Outlook/SharePoint user interface also leaves much to be desired.